HAUNTED WIRRAL: Wallasey Cemetery's phantom snatcher

In this latest tale, Tom explores the mystery of Wallasey Cemetery's phantom snatcher...

In November 1988, police contacted the heads of schools in the Wallasey and Woodchurch areas to alert them to a couple of abductors who were travelling around in a car, trying to snatch schoolgirls off the streets.

There had been an unsuccessful attempt to pull a 13-year-old girl into a car in Woodchurch in early November, and now a 14-year-old Wallasey girl had almost been dragged into a car close to the Rake Lane entrance of Wallasey Cemetery but the child managed to struggle free from her would-be abductor and ran off to school.

Parents naturally warned their children to be vigilant during the abduction scare and encouraged them to go to and from school with a friend or family member.

Two girls – Michelle and Kerry – both aged 13, were returning from school one foggy afternoon in November 1988, and as they recalled their parents telling them how the recent abduction had taken place near Wallasey Cemetery – which they were now passing – they clung on to one another.

As the girls passed the cemetery wall on Rake Lane, Michelle let out a shriek.

She turned, and saw two bare disembodied arms holding her school satchel.

Kerry couldn’t believe her eyes.

The two arms were sticking out of the wall of the cemetery, and as the hands of the arms let go of the satchel, they withdrew into the solid brick wall and the girls heard laughter on the other side of the cemetery wall.

Michelle was so afraid, she left her satchel on the floor and ran to her home on Zig Zag Road with her best friend close behind her.

Michelle’s father didn’t believe the strange story his daughter told him, but when the girl’s mother came home from work, she heard the account from Michelle – and Kerry – and she said she had heard of a few ghostly goings on at the cemetery – including one of a ghost that snatched bags off women as they passed the graveyard.

"I’ve never heard such a load of tripe," said Michelle’s dad, "there are no such things as ghosts," he added, and he turned to his wife with a smirk and said, "and you ought to know better; filling their heads with rubbish."

Other people encountered the phantom snatcher of Wallasey Cemetery.

A man I interviewed on the Billy Butler Show told me how he was going along Rake Lane one February morning in 1995 at around 7.30am on his way to work when something snatched off his woollen hat. It was a still foggy morning at the time and so a strong gust of wind could not have removed the hat, and furthermore, when the man passed near the spot on Rake Lane as he came home at 5pm, something threw the snatched hat at his feet.

The ghost seems to favour the Rake Lane side of the cemetery, as there are no reports of its nerve-jangling activities from the other roads that form part of the boundary of the place of the dead: Earlston Road, Seaview Road and Mortuary Road.

My guess would be that the ghost is of someone buried close to that section of wall on Rake Lane – possibly a person who was a bit of a joker when he was alive.

The most eerie reports of the cemetery ghost have come from people who have been waiting at the bus stop on Rake Lane, for the stop is positioned against the railings of the cemetery and some very bizarre things have happened there.

One night in December 2000, Des and Joanne, a couple in their sixties, were waiting for the bus at this stop, when Joanne suddenly had the intense feeling she was being watched.

"The hairs on the nape of my neck stood up," she told me, "and I just knew someone was standing close behind us – and of course, that meant they were in the cemetery, which was pitch black that time of the evening."

Joanne tried to ignore her sixth sense, and she talked about the weather to her husband when suddenly, she felt a hand tap her on her shoulder. She let out a yelp and swung around, and Des saw the hand retreat back through the railings.

The hand then gripped the railing – and it had no wrist attached to it. The spooked couple rushed away from the bus stop and flagged down a hackney cab.

The most recent case of the phantom prankster comes from 2017.

A 17-year-old girl from Wallasey’s Withen’s Lane named Bethany was waiting at the bus stop that night, not to get a bus, but to be picked up by her boyfriend Rogan in his new car, as he’d just passed his test, but the lad had had a row with Bethany’s mother (who thought he was not a capable driver) so the young couple had to meet at a prearranged rendezvous point – the bus stop on Rake Lane.

It was a cold and misty November night, and Bethany was carrying a haversack stuffed with clothes, as she was going to stay over at Rogan’s place.

The girl also wore a pink New York Yankees baseball cap, and as she waited at the stop, she kept checking her mobile, expecting a text from her boyfriend to explain why he was late.

Something snatched the baseball hat off Bethany’s head, and when she turned, the teenager saw a bare arm protruding from the timetable of the bus shelter.

The arm vanished through the shelter but was thrust out again, and the girl ran off screaming, leaving her cap on the pavement. Rogan arrived minutes later and picked up the cap at the stop.

He thought Bethany had been abducted but when he phoned her she was back at her house.

The origin of this ghost at Wallasey Cemetery remains a mystery...

Haunted Liverpool 32 is out now on Amazon.